uPortal IRC Logs-2013-10-25

[09:37:12 CDT(-0500)] <orev> what would be the best approach to showing a different set of links to users based on user or group? looking for something like the bookmarks portlet which can be prepopulated

[10:52:44 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> orev: Depends upon your needs. If you have a small number of groups, one approach that comes to mind is to create n versions of a portlet, such as the bookmarks portlet, and use portlet permissions to hide the portlets a user should not see based upon their group (or lack thereof)

[10:53:45 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> You can do this as well with a web proxy / gateway portlet if that is applicable.

[11:00:09 CDT(-0500)] <orev> links could be different down to a per user basis. I don't have millions of users, but a few hundred at least

[11:00:57 CDT(-0500)] <orev> I've not been having much luck with the web proxy portlet. even simple pages don't seem to load correctly. I feel like I'm missing some basic thing that everyone else seems to know but have no docs for

[11:01:42 CDT(-0500)] <orev> even a basic mrtg page causes rendering issues. and things are not getting proxied, like images used in css, etc..

[15:51:23 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> jwennmacher: apparently build #777 was quite lucky,

[15:52:22 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> No. I increased PermGen for the site biuld

[15:52:24 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> build

[15:52:45 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> come on, 777, how much luckier can you get with a build number?

[15:52:54 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> Ahhh... gotcha

[15:53:28 CDT(-0500)] <holdorph> increasing permgen is only coincidental

[15:55:29 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> orev - did you look at the view source on the resulting page? I did a quick check pointing web proxy to a page with some images and it displayed (not perfectly, but images did display). I'm not too familiar with that portlet, but it looks like it pulled out the html tag, but left basically everything else there in my test.

[15:57:02 CDT(-0500)] <orev> jwennmacher: yes, I looked at the source. some relative urls were not updated (like in css). not sure what happened with the other simple page, but I did see head and body tags in there

[15:58:33 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> what content are you trying to proxy? The portlet is really meant to proxy content you control and can insure it plays nicely in the portal (e.g. css, script, etc. don't mess up the portal and ideally leverages styles from the portal).

[15:59:26 CDT(-0500)] <orev> some other (pretty rich) web sites like jira. I was hoping I could easily incorporate them into the portal

[15:59:49 CDT(-0500)] <orev> lots of ajax and stuff. I tried the iframe portlet and it seemed to work a lot better

[15:59:52 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> If you are pointing to some arbitrary content, an iframe may be a better choice. It is completely isolated.

[16:00:08 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> yes, that's what the iframe portlet is for

[16:00:11 CDT(-0500)] <orev> yeah. no back or fwd buttons though. those would help

[16:00:44 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> can you open into a separate tab?

[16:01:50 CDT(-0500)] <orev> yeah, that might be the best approach. have the bookmarks just open in a new tab

[16:01:51 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> are you trying to show dashboard-type information?

[16:02:30 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> or actually launch into the target app (for user interaction)?

[16:02:53 CDT(-0500)] <orev> we have a bunch of different internal sites and I was just hoping to make a single front-end for them. I know you can do a lot with APIs, etc... to integrate stuff into the portal, but I'm not really looking for that level

[16:03:23 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> Are you able to do single-sign on auto-magically or do you need users to enter their credentials?

[16:04:41 CDT(-0500)] <orev> no sso yet, that would be part of this as well. the portal part is the kind of thing management likes to see as far as a real "thing", as opposed to sso which is bascially invisible

[16:06:41 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> OK. I was asking because the web proxy portlet v2 has a 'gateway' portlet that is like the bookmarks portlet, but it allows users to enter their username and password for each link, and the gateway portlet has some configuration to construct a page that posts those credentials to the target system. If the user's credentials are different than those in the portal, that's an option to consider. The links can replace the por

[16:07:40 CDT(-0500)] <orev> got cut off at "The links can replace the por..."

[16:08:10 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> The links can replace the portal window, or open in a new window.

[16:08:46 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> If that fits your use case better, it is something to consider.

[16:09:50 CDT(-0500)] <orev> probably the bigger issue would be selecting the links per user based on group and/or user id. whether it's in a separate window or in a portlet window is probably a minor issue

[16:11:03 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> I think that capability would need to be added to any of the portlets. Not terribly difficult but would involve some java programming.

[16:12:32 CDT(-0500)] <orev> yeah, that's what it sounds like. we have an app that we write in java already, and I was hoping a portal system might help reduce any of that work, but it doesn't look like it will make a big difference. it just moves the work somewhere else

[16:15:13 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> You already use uPortal?

[16:16:06 CDT(-0500)] <orev> no, not yet

[16:16:41 CDT(-0500)] <orev> evaluating it to see what benefits it provides. working on a proof of concept/demo

[16:17:31 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> That's cool. Let us know if you have other questions. I assume there are other use cases that brought the portal to mind; e.g. not just trying to solve this one specific one.

[16:18:33 CDT(-0500)] <orev> we just have a bunch of different systems that people need to remember links for. main benefit is to get all those links into one place. I can also see using it for things like maintenance banners

[16:19:07 CDT(-0500)] <orev> I'm sure once it's there, people will realize what else it can do and then you find the use cases

[16:20:23 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher> Not trying to aggregate some content together into one spot though? It would be a bit heavyweight just to do links (though it could grow into much more as you say).

[16:23:27 CDT(-0500)] <orev> yeah, that's why I thought trying to get the sites embedded in the portal might be a good way to start to bring things together instead of opening new tabs. it's one of those things management would think is really cool.

[16:23:39 CDT(-0500)] <orev> and I'm sure the big hit would be a weather widget

[16:23:56 CDT(-0500)] <jwennmacher>